On Tuesday, June 17, Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change held a virtual press briefing presenting the Global Ethical Stocktake (GES), at which CEE Executive Director Karenna Gore spoke. Other speakers included André Corrêa do Lago, Marina Silva, Selwin Hart, Antônio Patriota, Wanjira Mathai, and Mary Robinson.
During her remarks, Gore emphasized the importance of centering ethics during times “when a deeply felt and more and more widely shared sense of right and wrong is out of step with laws and social norms.” She highlighted historical precedents for social movements animated by an ethical grounding, including the Abolition Movement. The legalization and normalization of ecological destruction today similarly calls for an ethical response, she said.
The GES process officially launched with the European Dialogue on Tuesday, June 24, in Kew Gardens, London. Co-convened by Mary Robinson, who has served as the President of Ireland and the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights, the event featured interventions from speakers like Mara Ghilan, a Romanian climate activist and policy co-lead for YOUNGO; Daze Aghaji, a British climate activist and founder of Extinction Rebellion Youth UK; Emilie Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and co-author of the Paris Agreement; and Brice Böhmer, Transparency International’s Global Climate and Environment Coordinator. One particularly powerful story came from Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, a British activist who founded The Ella Roberta Foundation to honor her daughter’s legacy after she died at age nine from an asthma attack brought on by air pollution. Gore attended the gathering, describing it as “a fresh and honest exploration of the moral costs of our ecological circumstances and the ethical tools we have to break through them.”